Meet the new Front: the inbox that puts time back in your day

Companies run on email. From client updates to order inquiries, on average we spend more than 3 hours each day on one task — managing work email. But what if instead of taking up your time, your inbox gave you some back? What would you do with those hours instead?

We started Front to reinvent the inbox and give teams a more efficient, productive way to manage email. Since then, nearly 4,000 businesses have saved on average 6 hours per week for every teammate on Front by transforming how they collaborate on customer messages and internal communication.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of the next version of Front that unlocks new, more productive ways to work together. For teams from Tech and Professional Services, to Travel, Logistics, and more, this new version of Front helps you spend your time on what matters — getting work done.

Refreshed design for a lightning fast inbox

To keep Front lightning fast, our team undertook a multi-month effort to completely rewrite Front’s web and desktop app code in React, a modern coding framework.

On top of immediate gains in performance with messages loading quicker in the app, this new codebase gives us a strong foundation for Front’s future. We can build and release new features faster, while making the actions you take in Front feel instantaneous. With a refreshed, lighter UI and icons, the redesigned Front seems both familiar and brand new.

Improved access controls for efficient collaboration

Front helps teams collaborate better without messy forwards, CCs, and long internal email chains. Just @mention teammates to share and work off of the same email, get their input quickly with internal comments on the message, and even draft a reply together without sending edits back and forth.

Now, with the newest version of Front, you have more clarity and control around exactly who’s involved in a shared conversation. You can see at a glance who has access to the email, text, or Facebook message — just like a Google Doc. Quickly add or remove teammates to keep the right people in the loop, and everyone involved can see who’s read the latest.

We’ve also added smart merging in Front to reduce multiple copies of the same email down to one. So when you @mention a teammate on an email you both received, you can collaborate on a single, shared copy with more confidence and focus.

Start internal conversations, right from your inbox

We know you don’t always want to write an entire email to work with your team — sometimes a quick conversation is enough. Now, you’ve got that option in Front: instead of drafting an email, just kick off a standalone, internal conversation with your teammates and keep all your work discussions together for easy reference.

Simply set a subject for your conversation, then @mention teammates to ask for whatever input you need: updates on your upcoming product launch, a quote for a customer, or the latest revisions to your presentation. Keep the conversation private in your inbox, or move the conversation to a team inbox to share it. Either way, it’s easy to find later in Front.

Take control of your inbox with more powerful rules

Want to spend less time clearing out your inbox, so you can focus on your real work instead? With Front, you can. Meet your response time SLAs, route emails to the right person or team, and ensure issues are tagged and tracked properly — all with rules.

Rules make it easy to create automated workflows that organize your inbox to save you time and headaches. In the new version of Front, we’ve expanded our rules engine to power even more efficient workflows with fewer rules, so it’s simple to update them when processes change.

Using the new AND/OR options, you can build a single rule to handle multiple criteria, instead of building a separate rule for each one. You can even build a chain of rules that follow one after another to handle messages even faster. Rules make your inbox work for you, so you get more time to focus.

Your one to-do list for work

Front turns your inbox into your one master to-do list, so you don’t waste precious time on distracting notifications or jumping between tools.

All your important messages are streamlined into one queue: an update from your client, your teammate’s @mention asking you to reply, or an internal conversation about a new project. That way, it’s easy to prioritize — reply right away, mute to silence it, or snooze it to a later time.

With fewer distractions and one place to focus, Front gives you more time to get things done.

What’s next in Front

After a few months of close collaboration with our beta customers, we’re excited to release this new version of Front later this month. Be sure to sign up for early access, so we can keep you posted on when the new app is ready for you.

We started Front to make email work for modern teams and businesses, and we’re excited to be taking this next step in that journey with you. Being more productive at work isn’t about adding new tools to your stack — it’s about being more efficient with the tools you already rely on. As we spend more and more time on work email, it’s about time someone reinvented it.